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At first glance, Canada-based online accounting solution Wave is nothing special: you can do invoicing, create estimates, invoices, add your customers, suppliers, products, upload receipts and check some reports. Upon further inspection, you’ll see that the user interface is pretty empty; you have to pay for some additional features, including live chat and phone support, no win and loss reports are generated, and you usually can’t access your account from a mobile device. All of these should be warning signs to avoid the software. But Wave has a huge advantage over its competitors: it provides all the important features for every single user at no cost. In addition, you can close your account at any time. Therefore, if you are not satisfied with Wave’s services, you lose nothing. If you’re a sole proprietor or small business owner and you want to get accounting software that knows the basics without spending a fortune, Wave might be worth a try.
Accounting Wave
Wave is a cloud-based online accounting solution, so you don’t need to download any software. You just need to log in and you get everything the company has promised you – for free. Registration is free; you don’t have to worry about a trial period and you can cancel your account at any time.
Xero Vs Wave 2023
Wave’s dashboard is pretty empty: on the left you’ll find the most important features, while the rest of the screen is loosely taken up by your financial snapshot and recent activity. The available functions are as follows: transactions, invoices (including recurring), estimates and statements, payments, bills, receipts, accounting, reports, payroll and professional services.
However, some functions are completely missing from Wave Accounting’s services. Missing features are check creation and printing, time tracking, projects, 1099s, and profit and loss reports. And there are some features that are either not well-developed – like adding new customers, suppliers and products under the accounting sub-page – or they are far from essential, like Pro Services, which is just a built-in Google search for nearby accounting service providers. Also be prepared for the software to be a bit slow even when no other programs are open.
In this section you can quickly and easily create invoices, even recurring ones, and for reasons unknown, this is also where your estimates and statements are born. By clicking Create you can add your customer, the dates, the item you sold, the taxes, change the default currency and then either save and send your invoice or save and register a payment. If you want to change the look of your invoice, just go to Settings and choose from the three templates, change the colors and many more.
To create a receipt, you must upload an image of it; first either from your computer or by using your mobile device. Once the image of the receipt is uploaded, you need to wait while Wave processes it, after which you can enter all the necessary information about the new receipt. Once you have checked all the information, click Verify and the receipt will be added to your expenses. However, keep in mind that once verified, you can no longer edit the receipt, only view or delete it.
Accounting Apps For Ios And Android In Comparison
On the Transactions page, you can only see your unverified transactions by default. These are the transactions waiting to be added to your income/expenses and unfortunately you have to do this verification process manually. However, you can merge or delete your transactions, transfer them to other connected accounts, or add new income and expenses manually.
While you can log into your account and use every feature you have, doing accounting with Wave on your mobile device is anything but fun. If you still have to use the software, we suggest you access Wave’s service via tablet, and don’t forget to rotate the device horizontally.
However, there are many apps developed by the company that allow you to access certain features of the software: invoicing, payment, payroll and receipts. Unfortunately, only the latter is available for Android users, for the other features you either need to use an iOS device or do your best with the “mobile version”. That’s a shame, because the Receipts by Wave app we tested on Android is pretty good. You just capture the receipt with the camera on your mobile device, it is automatically attached to the new receipt, you wait for processing, enter the necessary information, verify the receipt and the next time you access the accounting solution on your computer, the receipt will be there.
Since Wave is a completely free accounting solution, we expected it to have very few integration offerings. It turns out we were right: there are only three third-party applications that can be integrated into your Wave account. These applications are: PayPal, Shoeboxed and Etsy for shop owners. While it’s a big pro that integration with these services is fast and smooth – and like many other accounting solutions companies, Wave also supports and offers an API – we believe that providing only three possible software integrations is far from enough. Hopefully, more companies will find Wave in the future so this number can finally start to increase rapidly.
Waveapps Wave Accounting
With that said, we’d like to tell you a little more about the three third-party software available for integration:
After the PayPal integration, you will be able to see all your transactions that you need to verify. You can then transfer them to other accounts you’ve linked to Wave, merge them, or even delete them.
With Shoeboxed, you can scan and organize receipts, expense reports, manage business cards, track mileage and more. And the best of all? It is completely free of charge.
Connect your Etsy account to Wave and you can see and track your earnings from selling your products.
Bank Payments For 1% Per Transaction By Wave
We had to check our vision several times just to make sure we were seeing the correct price on Wave Accounting. But every time we refreshed our browser, the price remained the same: $0.00. You heard right: Wave’s accounting solution is completely free of charge. No trial period, no restrictions, no contract that allows you to close your account, which you can do whenever you want, no extra fees. It’s just you and the accounting solution. So where’s the trick?
The trick is that, like YouTube and many other “free” services on the Internet, the company’s main funders – such as American Express, Dell, Microsoft, HP, RBC and Symantec – pay money to display their ads on your account, whether you like it or not or not. It’s annoying, we admit, but if this is the price for using the software for free, we’d take it.
However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t any features you have to pay for. One such feature is Payments by Wave. This extension allows you to add direct payment links to your customers’ invoices who can then instantly pay the money they owe you with their credit/debit cards. The price for this add-on is 2.9% + $0.3 per card transaction.
The other feature you have to pay for is (obviously) Payroll by Wave. The base fee for this service is $15 per month + as many times $4 per month as the number of employees you have. However, if you have more than 11 but fewer than 100 employees, the per capita surcharge is reduced to $2.
Wave Accounting Alternative For New Zealand
If you need any kind of help, Wave Accounting recommends you use its FAQ, community forum, an email support by submitting a support request and leaving a message on its social media pages. You can also watch a pre-recorded webinar on YouTube where the basics of this accounting solution are explained. All these services come free with the software.
However, to get live chat or phone support, you have to pay a monthly fee. This attitude of Wave is extremely questionable in terms of the customer, but understandable given the free nature of the software. Pricing is as follows: live chat support is $9 per month, while inclusive telephone support Monday through Friday from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm EST is $19 per month. To get three months of discounted support, you have to pay $49 one time.
At first we thought the Wave’s only advantage was its pricing, but thankfully we were wrong. However, this does not mean that Wave Accounting is the essence of perfection. Unfortunately, the software is slow and not very appealing, some features are bundled as one such as invoicing, estimates, bank statements, and the payroll and credit card payment options can only be activated if you pay a monthly fee. The number of third-party software that you can integrate into Wave is insufficient; many applications, which handle some functions separately, are not available for Android platforms, the most annoying
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